Amazon buys audio book specialist for $300 million
By Erina Lin, Thursday 31 January 2008 at 21:11 :: Media Ownership :: #1184 :: rss
Amazon announced Thursday it will buy Audible, an audiobook specialist, for US$300 million.
Audible sells nearly 80,000 audio products, across radio shows, newspapers, magazines, books and exclusive programmes, which Amazon will be able to push to its vast userbase of the audio book market.
In addition, it fits with Amazon's Kindle, the electronic reader tool that allows subscribers access to 90,000 newspapers, magazines, books and blogs. Audible books are already compatible with Kindle, although they have to be sideloaded from a PC rather than downloading wirelessly, according to The Guardian.
"Audible.com offers the best customer experience, the widest content selection and the broadest device compatibility in the industry. Working together, we can introduce more innovations and bring this format to an even wider audience," said Amazon's senior vice president for worldwide digital media.
According to MarketWatch, the deal also includes purchasing Audible's cash and short-term investments at closing. Shares of Amazon.com increased 26 cents to close at US$74.21 on Wednesday.
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